Most engineers are lazy…and that's often a good thing

Lazy people can also be the most effective and productive, it seems to me.

[OK, calm down, there's no need to get angry at me, at least not yet.]

Here's what I mean: "lazy" is not the same as "sloth". When you are slothful, your preferred activity is to sit around doing nothing or very little, and avoid work. That's not engineers.

But when you are lazy, you look to do things in the most efficient waypossible, so you don’t have to re-do them, or so you have time for other things. In this sense, being lazy is just a complement to being efficient and productive—but without all the "running-around, looking-busy" mode we often see.

Yes, some of that hustle and bustle is someone getting a lot done, but often, they are trying to play catch-up due to poor planning or ineffective execution of the task.

But a lazy engineer:

•looks at what has to be done, then tries to figure out what tools, techniques, setups, fixtures, and jigs will allow the overall project to be done better and faster—even if it means taking time up front to plan or create these items.

•understands that such a modest initial investment in the above items can pay big benefits later on via smoother project development, better documentation, or fewer mistakes and re-spins.

•is often (not always) organized, so as not to waste time looking for a file, note, component, or other items.

The problem is that management often mistakes such laziness for outright slothfulness. I did so, too, once, until I got smarter.

Here's why: Back when the Earth was still flat and microprocessors were just starting to rule the land, our four-person product development team (two of us for circuits, one for software, one for system integration) also had an assigned technician. This fellow never looked like he was doing anything. He moved slowly, deliberately, and methodically. At one point, management asked us if he actually did much of anything.

Reality was that he was extremely efficient and cool under pressure, and we could never keep up with him. We'd give him a set of tasks, and he'd go off and make list of what he needed, get them, pull things together, and then do them. (Ken V: if you are reading this, it's you.) He also knew everyone in the shop area, and so could get things like rough-cut prototype RF shields made on the side, without formal paperwork.

So, hail to the laziness of engineers, I say. But don’t worry, I won’t be telling the general public that good engineers are also lazy—they would very likely misinterpret my point.

Have you ever had a similar encounter with lazy-looking engineers who were also very efficient? Or had cases where the outward appearance of a member of your team was actually very different from their actual contribution, like our technician?

I look at results, not what a person "looks like" while working. If I don't see good results when I expect them, I would then term that person as lazy or incompetent or needing additional direction/mentoring (or possibly having a bad hair day). Having said that, extensive experience of a person is very important in making an accurate judgement.

When asked what my personal strengths were I once told an interviewer, "I'm lazy." It definitely got his attention. Then I got to explain what that meant. I refuse to do any repetitive data work. If I can get the computer to do it, I will. In my previous job I cut data entry time by 95% and increased throughput 16-fold while eliminating data entry errors. In a still earlier job as a cost estimator I automated the cost estimating system and increased throughput 10-fold, eliminating my position which got me a promotion into engineering.
Telling the interviewer I was lazy was a gamble but it made me stand out from the other applicants and I got the job.

It could get tricky sometimes. If you have two team members, one who gets things done conventionally "the hard way" and one who got it done in an unconventional but quicker and more effective way, who should get more points? The unconventional way is often not recognized or even accepted by colleagues, more often than you'd think.

The behaviour that this article describes and recommends is not laziness, but diligence. Diligent people are careful, persistent and industrious. Lazy people are idle and negligent. To say that engineers should be lazy is either to say that they should be idle and negligent, or to redefine 'laziness' as a kind of diligence, which just a pointless muddle. So it is probably better to do away with the 'laziness as a virtue' theme.

I caution people that I am easy to get along with, except that I am sort of intolerant of two things, laziness and stupidity. I define laziness quite a bit differently, rather as an aversion to putting forth any effort to do an assigned task. That is a lot different than wanting to do it efficiently, and not need to redo it. Stupidity is refusing to expend the effort to understand something, which grows out of my definition of laziness. So you can see that we define them a bit differently. So my thinking is that good engineers want to do the job very efficiently, and only do it once, doing it right the first time.

Back before simulations were readily available and logic design was still done with discrete gates there were two types of designers - those who rushed the schematic and worried about things like timing later; and those who carefully considered prop delays, setup and hold times, fanouts, and choice of the correct family for each function based on speed requirement during the schematic drawing phase. They were much slower completing the schematic, but their designs usually worked first time. The first type invariably spent a long time debugging obvious timing problems, and their designs were always flaky in the field.